Sweet Beth: Comedian Beth Stelling records debut album

Last week the Chicago Tribune profiled Beth Stelling, a rising stand-up comedian who recently made her television debut on Conan. Currently a resident of Los Angeles, Stelling returned to Chicago this summer to capture her warm deadpan delivery in the unlikely format of a debut album. Titled “Sweet Beth,” the album will preserve the stand-up routines she honed during a four-year stint in Chicago. A trend among local comedians, the Tribune talked to Stelling about why she decided to make the album:

One of Beth Stelling’s motivations for making an album out of her stand-up comedy was to put some of her older, best-working material on the record to, in a way, enshrine it and push herself to move on to the next thing… No one’s expecting a “Let’s Get Small,” the 1977 Steve Martin comedy record that became a blockbuster, but the comedy album can still be an important tool in a comic’s repertoire, part calling card to the industry, part memento for fans, part mirror they can gaze into to figure out where they are as artists. “I wanted to have something to plug that wasn’t, like, a show. And I wanted to kind of preserve these jokes I’d been doing for years and also to kind of force myself to purge them,” Stelling said.

Last year, Doejo created a website for Stelling that highlights her unique blend of accessible, smart and self-deprecating comedy. SweetBeth.com is centered around an extensive press page and active event calendar that helps her stay engaged with her fans while showing off her uncanny ability to pull a funny face during a photo shoot.

Her upcoming album will be out on Rooftop Comedy records in September or October. For more info about Stelling, check out this recent Q&A in the Chicago Reader.